worse than being alone
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: No matter where Sasuke goes, his brother is sure to follow… (Note: Itachi and Sasuke pairing)


**Fandom: Naruto  
Title: worse than being alone.  
Rating: pg-13  
Pairing: Itachi + Sasuke  
Description – ****No matter where Sasuke goes, his brother is sure to follow****…**** (Note: Itachi and Sasuke pairing)**

**Disclaimer - Naruto isn****'****t mine.**

**worse than being alone.  
by miyamoto yui  
**

There's a chill that goes down my spine. It's like an ice cube that's rolling in slow motion down my back. It's like the coldness of your blood, your very tongue licking my bones.

There was a time when things could come so easily to me. I mean with feelings that could say, touch, and see. Now, they've become very numb inside of me.

I feel you even though you're not in sight. I know that you're there. I know that you're watching me with those dark eyes of yours. They're always half-closed, sleeping and awake at the same time.

At that time…  
I was just a little boy who suddenly became an adult in mind.

You raped all of my emotions away.

That's what you've taken away from me.

I know I can breathe, but I know it can't be for long. There are shoji screens around us. They illuminate in different colors. They bleed from red to green to blue to black and then back to blood again. I turn around in my room of a box, this little display you've put me on.

The windows are all around me, but when I touch them, they burn me like severe snow in the mountains.

I'll scream, but no one can here me. I don't even want to hear myself. Can I?

I know you're out there in the darkness before me. In this light that grows bright and dim like a candle flickering on a lonely night filled with cool anger, I feel your eyes tease me with their cruel playfulness.  
I glance from side to side as I press my fingers on the glass, not caring anymore if my hands fuse into the windows.  
I don't have to undress to feel like you've already taken off my clothes.

Turning around suddenly, I feel the world spin from this room. Everything is so perfect. There are colors and everything is calculated. The size of the windows and the screens are exactly the same from each side. I can't tell my directions anymore. Even if I close my eyes, I'm so confused that I can't concentrate.

This is how you made me feel that day. Until now, I can't erase you.

I can't even hate you for it. Tell me there's something more demented than that, won't you?

From a hidden door, you appear instantly in back of me. I move my head to the right to catch your red eyes burning into mine. You kneel before me with a smirk on your face as you nod your head to acknowledge your presence.

And like the little boy that screams to live, my right hand moves my whole body. I push it on the area that shows me the coal that used to contain the heart of my older brother. My eyes watch my hand as it bleeds with some of the skin torn and etched on one side of my near invisible prison. The blood flows like branches and it makes roots while soaking into the tatami mat floor.

From the outside looking in, I appear to be like a mime that's gone insane.

"I will kill you." I say but sound no longer comes out. "I've lost my voice."  
Might as well, he can't hear me anyway.

Unhooking the collar of his coat, he pushes off one side to reveal half of his chest. He reaches through the thick glass and pulls some of my hand out and places it over his heart. With his lips, he kisses my fingers that no longer feel anything. Pulling my wrist, half of my arm is stuck in between spaces, he tries grasping my fingers with his to press into his skin with the remainder of my fingernails.

"But can you?" he tilts his head. "Little brother, you are still so weak."

My eyes squint even smaller as I analyze his every move. I want to tremble and I want to feel him. There is nothing else that intrigues me more. I never know what to do with him. He can't ever decide what he wants to do with me.

Somehow, my fingers twitch. I feel him. I want to take them back.

Even if he's here, even if it's something that I've always wanted, why is it like this?

In one moment, he glances at me with his face like a statue. But it looks pained. He looks lost. My older brother looks like he did before. It is the look that I know he loves me.

Very much.

It's the one I tried to push away from my memories.  
It's the one I tried to replace when he left me.  
It's the one I tried to kill when he killed himself that day and became someone that I thought I didn't know. And it scares me.

I've known this person all along.

He won't let me pull away. He presses his fingers deeper within…

I can feel the beating of his heart. I can touch the pulsating blood.  
"Tell me this is an illusion, Aniki."

His stone face reveals nothing.

"Tell me you hate me, Sasuke," your lips tell me. "Tell me what I want to hear the most."

As he reaches with his left hand to pull my collar, he forces my fingers to encircle the boundaries of his pulsing heart. He cringes as I close my eyes with my head being pulled through the burning ice block of a wall. His lips reach mine.

I gulp for air.

"It's all a dream," I whisper to myself into the darkness as the moon shines from above through the spaces of the leaves of the trees.

I'm stuck to the ground with my sweat pouring on the grass of the deepening forest. The wind blows through and even though I know I should be alone, I can feel his eyes on me.

I don't know why or how you can be here. But there is a glistening of red from somewhere. I can feel you from all over my body.

Before I know it, I confusedly mumble with the same innocence and fear I had on that day, "Aniki."

Maybe it's a hallucination, after all. I'm training in the middle of nowhere and I have a fever too.  
But how come when I closed my eyes, someone kissed me while pushing a pill down my throat?

I know it's you. Before I closed my eyes and became unconscious, I saw red descending like the angel of death or the rain of blood over my body. Clearly, I heard your voice whisper into my ear,

"Hate me, Sasuke…  
…it's the only way."

For what, I wonder and want to ask. For freedom? For sin? I won't allow myself to have either without you.

I gasp for air while suddenly opening my eyes again to see the light.

Weakly, I blink my eyes. "I can't hate you."  
I am mad at myself at this realization that the logical part of my mind never wants to believe.

Biting my lower lip from the pain, I push myself up. I stand up and lean on a tree. Pushing myself from tree to tree, I walk towards my unknown destination. As long as it leads to you, that's all that matters.

Aniki, I have to hold on for the both of us. Even if it's like this, I've accepted it and I know you hate me even more for this weakness of mine for sentimentality.

But if I don't…  
…that means you'll be gone forever.

And for me, that's worse than being alone.

**Owari. / The End.**

**Author****'****s note:** I don't know why, but I had this image of Sasuke trapped in a block of ice. Itachi is watching him like a voyeur that won't let anything touch what is his. It is a disturbing, yet wonderfully and painfully pretty image for me though.  
**  
Saturday, November 13, 2004  
2:52 AM**


End file.
